Computer science team advances to World Finals

Warsaw Bound
William & Mary's Team Gold (from left), Michael Christensen M.S. '12, Aaron Dufour '12, and Brett Cooley '13, who will be traveling to Poland in the spring to compete in the International ICPC.
Photo credit to Saskia Mordijck

A team of student computer scientists will represent William
& Mary at an international competition in Poland this May after racking up
a College-best showing at a preliminary event in November.

The William
& Mary Team Gold , comprised of Aaron Dufour ’12, Michael Christensen M.S.
’12 and Brett Cooley ’13— along with their coach, Deborah Noonan—were invited
to compete in the World Finals
of the Association for Computing Machinery’s International Collegiate
Programming Contest (ACM-ICPC) after placing second in the regional
competition. The three are students in William & Mary’s Department of Computer
Science, where Noonan is an instructor.

Noonan explained that the regional contest was held at
several sites, in order to accommodate the 166 teams competing. William &
Mary sent two teams to the Christopher Newport University site. Team Gold won
First Place On-Site among the teams competing at CNU and came in second in the
ACM-ICPC Mid-Atlantic Region, which includes colleges and universities from
North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, D.C. and parts of West Virginia and
Pennsylvania.

Noonan said Team Gold’s second place was the strongest
finish of any William & Mary team in the fifteen years that she has coached
the team, earning them an invitation to the World Finals. Dufour, Christensen
and Cooley worked together to submit correct solutions to four of the eight
problems that comprised the challenge. A second William & Mary computing
squad—Team Green—placed fourth on site and 55th overall in the regionals. Team
Green members were Jeff Soosiah, Kevin Ji and Alex Valentin.

“I am proud that they will be representing us at such a
prestigious international event as the World Finals,” said Virginia Torczon, professor of computer science and
chair of the department. “Team Gold is the first William & Mary team to
receive such an invitation. Placing second in the Mid-Atlantic Region is a big
deal, too. Our team placed ahead of a number of schools with much larger
computer science departments.”

When they go to Warsaw in May, the members of
Team Gold will be going up against some of the best computer scientists in the
world. They will be one of 110 teams competing in the World Finals. Noonan explained that World Finals
team were culled from regional competitions across the globe, involving more
than 8,000 teams from 2,000 universities and 88 nations.